Is wearing a poncho for Halloween offensive? Dressing up as a Mexican?
Dressing up for Halloween should be comedic, and apparently being a Hispanic was the joke of the year for 2015.
This past Halloween, I saw more cultural appropriation on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, than I have ever seen anywhere else in my life. I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia, and moving nearly 900 miles north didn’t instill in the back of my mind that I would be finding my people suppressed and laughed at as entertainment by the clear majority here — white people.
While arriving on campus, I noticed how I got a few more stares … not because of my short shorts but because of my skin tone. For the first time, I felt out of place being a student of color at a predominantly white institution (PWI). I feel that my guard is always up when I am walking to class, ready for someone to make a snarky remark so I can raise my voice to educate them in their ignorance. Oftentimes, I feel that my culture or that of other minorities is underappreciated because it is unknown.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is small in cultural awareness but large in cultural division. A predominantly white institution has now made it a requirement for their students to take an ethnic studies course to fill their graduation requirements. My professor for my Afro-American Studies course recently mentioned that graduating white students from UW-Madison were not getting hired because they did not possess the social skills to communicate with anyone outside of their race. Little to no surprise, more than half of the students in the class were white.
What does this mean, in just this scenario? Being one of the few students of color in the classroom …let alone, the entire campus. When I walk into a lecture hall full of white students who have probably never seen anyone like me, it makes me somewhat exotic and unwanted.
Like, “you shouldn’t be here but you look different enough that I want you around.”
Moments that make me feel dangerous, like the time a student walked to the farthest side of the elevator because I walked in. The tension wasn’t between me and the other white student, the tension was between themselves and their knowledge of my existence. The shock that someone that looked like me could be successful at this institution.
One thing that has drawn me closer to my culture while being at UW-Madison is the lack thereof. It gives me a greater sense of pride to walk into a class full of white students and know that I am sitting here because of the hard work, persistence, and time that I put in. I am humble enough to recognize that my parents came from an elementary school education, never stressed me about grades, but I knew that my education could help me help them.
Being a student of color at UW-Madison is bizarre to an extent of obtainability. I don’t always feel that I am safe while I walk outside or even to the dining hall but is anything in life really safe? I know I am treated differently because I have always been different. Even if you took my color out of context, like some students try to do.
“I don’t even see color!”
But you obviously must do if you felt the need to make that statement. There is an enormous gap equality but I cannot make my own experience any different than the rest of the world. In all honesty, have we reached true equality or any bit of it?
Moments that make me feel dangerous, like the time a student walked to the farthest side of the elevator because I walked in. The tension wasn’t between me and the other white student, the tension was between themselves and their knowledge of my existence. The shock that someone that looked like me could be successful at this institution.
Now, if you ask me what it means to go to a PWI, I would say that it’s new, but not deadly. I find spaces where I do not fill the standard or perceived “norm” as a gateway to further increase my sense of cultural ownership while teaching others about my culture. While some may try to appropriate my culture into comedic gimmicks of a “typical Mexican in a poncho,” I know that their ignorance cannot be blamed for the lack of being educated. If no one educates white students about brown and black culture, who will?
Since I’ve been here at UW-Madison, I know I am brown, buoyant, and boundless. I will not let anyone take possession of my own state of being brown for their enjoyment if I don’t let them. I will not be drowned in rivers to only be silenced for someone else’s American Dream. I may be Hispanic, brown, and rooted in my roots, but my American Dream isn’t worth any less than the white American in the same lecture hall. We both got here on standardized tests and AP tests, the only difference is that I had to work a little harder after filling in Latino/Hispanic on my scantron because I wasn’t built to succeed.
